Ariel Troster
“You can’t rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there.” That quote is from The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the seminal work by the great Jane Jacobs.
I have been reflecting on that statement a lot lately, as we work to revitalize Ottawa’s downtown core in the face of post-COVID workforce changes.
There is no denying: Centretown has changed a lot in the last few years. The shift in the federal workforce has meant we are missing roughly 80,000 to 100,000 people who would have commuted in and out of the core prior to the year 2020. This has forced some businesses to close and significantly reduced the number of public transit riders. It has led to more empty storefronts and fewer eyes on the street.
Many of you attended our large community forum on neighbourhood security in August. We heard from residents, business owners, social service providers, the Ottawa Police, and people with lived experience of addiction and homelessness. That meeting propelled my office to demand more resources to tackle these very real challenges in Centretown.
We have made some significant progress. Thanks to our community’s advocacy, we were able to secure $200,000 in funding to allow the continuation and expansion of the Homeless Crisis Outreach Program run by the Somerset West Community Health Centre. And, as you may have heard, Centretown was selected as the location of a new, non-police, 24/7 crisis response service, which will launch this summer.
Many of you have expressed a desire to see more community police officers “walking the beat” in Centretown. The new funding for Ottawa announced by the provincial government earlier this week includes more resources for public safety downtown. In order to qualify for the funding, our city has to submit a new security plan for the core within 120 days.
My office will be reaching out to key community stakeholders to help ensure that residents and business owners have input into what this plan may look like.
I am inspired by the work that Inner City Health is doing in Sandy Hill and the ByWard Market, training people with lived experience as neighbourhood block leaders. This has the potential to provide useful training and employment opportunities for street-involved folks, while also beautifying the neighbourhood and establishing “good neighbour” agreements in troubled parts of downtown.
We are also working hard on the “putting people downtown” part of the equation by encouraging more conversions of empty office buildings into apartments. Just this week, District Realty announced that they will be converting an 11-storey office building on Elgin into residential units. And the CLV Group is in the process of converting their second building, this one on Laurier.
I have been working with city staff, fellow councillors and the development industry on policy levers to encourage more adaptive re-use of vacant office space.
I am also thrilled that, as part of Budget 2024, we were also able to secure $200,000 in funding for public realm and pedestrian projects. Our office is currently working with the Centretown and Somerset Village BIAs to plan some fun pilot projects and outdoor activities for the summer. Stay tuned for more information on that.
As always, the Ward 14 team is here for you. Don’t hesitate to email us at ariel.troster@ottawa.ca if we can be of help.
Ariel Troster is the councillor for Somerset Ward, which includes Centretown.